The present invention relates to an apparatus for locating a remote control transmitter to locate a remote control transmitter which is intended for controlling an electronic or electric device such as TV, VCR, or air conditioner.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional apparatus for locating a remote control transmitter, which comprises a plurality of infrared diodes 2 whose sensing area is divided separately at a uniform angle due to the shape of an infrared guide 1, a plurality of amplifiers 3 for amplifying the signal sensed by infrared diodes 2 respectively, a switch circuit 4 to output the amplified signal sequentially and selectively by a control signal CTL, a filtering circuit 5 for filtering the signal selected from said switch circuit 4, a rectifying circuit 6 for rectifying said filtered signal, and a comparing circuit 7 to output a location detecting signal after said rectified signal is compared with a reference signal.
In the operation of the conventional apparatus the infrared signal emitted from a remote control transmitter is received by the infrared diodes 2. And said infrared signal is received concentrically by the infrared diodes disposed in the particular direction among a plurality of infrared diodes by the infrared guide 1.
Further, said received infrared signal is amplified by the amplifier 3 and input to the switch circuit 4, which selects a plurality of outputs of the amplifier 3 sequentially by the control signal CTL and supplies them to the filtering circuit 5.
Then, the filtering circuit 5 removes noise from the selected output of the amplifier and supplies it to the rectifying circuit 6, which rectifies the input signal and supplies it to the comparing circuit 7.
Finally, the comparing circuit 7 compares the level of the input infrared signal sensed from one selected particular infrared diode with a prescribed reference value, outputs the compared result as a high or low signal, and detects the location of the remote control transmitter according to the high or low signal by interpreting which infrared diode sensed the infrared rays.
That is, the infrared guide 1 limits the receiving route of the adjacent infrared diodes 2, which can receive the infrared signal of the remote control transmitter in the particular direction. As a result of comparing the received signals the location of the remote control transmitter is detected.
However, the aforementioned conventional apparatus for locating remote control transmitter has the following problems. Since the infrared guide for dividing the respective sensing areas, requires a plurality of infrared diodes disposed at the respective sensing areas between the guides, and a same number of amplifiers for each receiving signals are required, the circuit becomes complicated. In order to realize the exact analysis of the distance information from the remote control transmitters a separate analog-to-digital converter is required so that the circuit becomes more complicated, Accordingly, the locating operation of the remote control transmitter also becomes unreliable.